In backup storage systems, such as those used for large servers, robotics are often employed to move tapes to and from drives in order to store backup data from the servers on the tapes. These backup storage systems are tested by issuing various machine control sequences that cause the robotics and drives to perform various operations and by measuring the execution results. Currently, text-based scripts are used to create the machine control sequences that are used to perform these operations. In order to modify the machine control sequences, the text-based scripts must be modified. Both creating and modifying text-based scripts can be extremely difficult and time-consuming tasks due to the cryptic nature of text-based scripts.
The results of execution of the text-based scripts by devices are typically presented in the form of text-based log files, which are equally cryptic and difficult to understand, even to persons skilled in analyzing such files. Although GUI analysis tools, such as UNIX and Motif running on Windows, are capable of being set up to make analyzing machine control sequence results easier than the task of analyzing text-based log files, these tools still do not provide a convenient way for viewing high-level execution summary data or low-level device debugging data. Furthermore, these types of tools are implemented in their native languages and are not portable over different operating systems.